Dancing Baby Expands Fair Use

Mark Hefflinger at Digital Media Wire reports:

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that copyright holders must consider the potential "fair use" of their works before sending copyright takedown notices to online video sites. "In order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with 'a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,' the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright," U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote, in his ruling.

This is a great mandate and clearer definition.  As you listen to "Let's Go Crazy" on the clip, it is clearly in the background and not added later.  It's documenting a moment. This is that baby and his dance that we can all thank for it:

We Own The Spectrum, But...

Broadcasters fight hard against public use of the blank spectrum, popularly know as "white spaces".  It could be made useful, and it's the public's, so what gives?  Tech companies and Digital Rights organizations have been fighting hard to make the blank spectrum available for broadband use.  Me, believing that Television's days are numbered, see no reason not to adopt the future right now and make those white spaces available to everyone.  Info wants to travel where it can travel, every where.

You can read more about it on BoingBoing here.  And go even more in depth with Ars here.

Net Neutrality Is Not The Fairness Doctrine

The Conservatives at The FCC have been up to the old dis-info game.  Robert McDowell, one of the two FCC commisioners to recently vote AGAINST the Comcast judgement, tried to rally the right by linking Net Neutrality to the abandoned Fairness Doctrine.  

I, for one, would love to see the Fairness Doctrine return, and with it the respect for all voices that the "public" in public airwaves demand, but find this sort of deliberate confusion quite frustrating.   

Read the Portfolio artcicle here.

Humanity Lobotomy

The team behind the indie hit FOUR EYED MONSTORS is making a doc on Net Neutrality and needs everyone's help.  They have a trailer up here.  Check it out.

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

Major Magazines For Free

As you know, "the future of everything is free".  Certainly in the digital world, if you want anyone to read anything, you have to give it away.  It brightens my day to be able to get any major publication for nothing, even when they are magazines I wouldn't normally read.  Now if someone will only give me the time it takes it look at them.

Fortunately, the device I found allows me to look at magazines on my iPhone, so the next time I am stuck with nothing to do (when was the last time that happened?), I can browse NME, Technology Today, or even Playboy.  Check out:   .  It's very simple to set up when you do it directly from your iPhone.

Digital Inspiration also has a neat simple hack to be able to do it from your computer if you like a bigger screen.

Do They Have The Right To Peer Inside Your iPod?

Should others have the right to see what you have on your hard drives?  

Should custom agents be able to check to make sure no one is importing stolen intellectual property (aka bootlegs) via their MP3 players and laptops?

You may not have anything to say about the issue.  The G8 has met, and many other countries are considering whether to pass the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  As a filmmaker, I am certainly in favor of protection of Intellectual Property Rights, but the enactment of Draconian laws will never be the solution.  

What is the ACTA?  Well, it seems no one fully knows what's in it.  Public Knowledge has  a good overview here.

What's to be upset about?  Well, read what the Free Software Foundation has to say about it right here.

And what The Guaradian had to say here.

The G8 was supposed to ratify it at the end of July.  I haven't yet found out where it currently stands.

Are Your Rights Being Violated?

Boing Boing hipped me to the Electronic Frontier Foundations's ISP Testing Tool "Switzerland".

It's particularly resonant that EFF released this just prior to the FCC fining Comcast for violating Net Neutrality.  Now we all check to make sure that no one is given preferential treatment or being denied access.  Citizen Law Enforcers Unite!

"Until now, there hasn't been a reliable way to tell if somebody -- a hacker, an ISP, corporate firewall, or the Great Firewall of China -- is modifying your Internet traffic en route."

Dear MPAA: Don't Alienate The Consumer!

I am worried that the film industry is poised to follow the music biz right down the tubes.  

The MPAA has asked the FCC for permission to engage in "selective output control".  You can read about at Public Knowledge here.  It's a new issue to me, but it sounds very short sighted.  I understand the desire to end piracy -- although I am a believer in bootlegging as a means of audience access -- but we should never do it in such a way that forces the consumer to throw out their entire home entertainment set up!

Mark Cuban has just jumped into the fray, urging the MPAA to spend the money where it will do good: promoting films, and not in ways that will alienate the consumer.  Check out what he has to say on Blogmaverick.

Tiered Pricing Of The Internet

Tiered Pricing Of The Internet is going to be a bigger and bigger issue in the months to come. Bandwith is the next fuel shortage.  The Cable Companies have a virtual monopoly on both what comes in and goes out of your home.  And they can monitor it and would like to charge you based on consumption (The NY Times covered this six weeks ago, but...).

On one hand, paying for how much you eat makes sense.  On the other, we've been there before, seen its effects, and now have come through to an entirely different place.  We have been on the verge of something happening for fifteen years, but we still don't know what it is.  The Internet has been both a promise and a threat for so long now, it seems like all but the gatekeepers have forgetten which side they are sitting on.

The Internet is the first real step forward for democracy everywhere that I have been able to experience in my lifetime.  Our current ability to reach out and talk to whomever we want about whatever we want is exhilarating.  And everyone really understands it.  But if this is taken away from us, not only is it safe to assume there will be a profound reaction, but also that the few will have benefited yet again at the expense of the many.

As much as I love the old way (i.e. watching films in a movie theater), the future is what you want, when you want it -- right here, right now.  The only reason I don't feel we are fully in that era of the immediate yet, is that you can still feel people's hesitancy to turn to the Internet for their needs -- even the ones that it can actually provide.  Let's face it, there is no need for TV anymore -- other than controlling what people watch.  But I don't see the sets flying out the windows yet.

If we halt the progress now, and make people ration their explorations, we will be missing an incredible opportunity.  People are freeing themselves to speak openly as never before, expose themselves to ideas and images as never before, and they will also be willing to spend like never before -- but if we start to charge them more for that opportunity before they have embraced the habit, we will be forfeiting the fortune of tomorrow for the few bucks of today.  

The scary thing is that because those measly coins will land in the greedy paws of the few at the current gates of power, instead of being a huge pile of plenty on the table of the many for us all to feast on, you can smell that it might just go that way instead of the path of common sense.

Net Neutrality: The Key Issue

I imagine Net Neutrality will be a regular focus here at IW2BF.  I am by no means an expert on it, but I do recognize that my opportunity as a Content Creater (aka Film Producer) to access audiences hinges on it.  As a general audience member too, I relish my ability to watch what I want, when I want it, and resist anyone telling me what to watch (without me first selecting that curator that is) or restricting my or anyone's ability to access it.  It is precisely this open access that I love about the Internet.  And it is this that the TeleCo's and others wish to end.

Fortunately, there are a lot of people working to preserve Net Neutrality.  The first thing you need to do is go to www.savetheinternet.com  and sign their petition, write to your rep in congress, and get their regular email blast.  It's a great site.

There are also a lot of good articles that you can find on the subject:

Adbusters: Net Neutrality

Lessig's 2006 "No Tolls On The Internet" 

FAQs: Net Neutrality

Introduction

I have been blasting a handful of you about the things I encounter at the intersection of Intellectual Property Rights, Content Creation, The Law, Liberty, and General Net Surfing.  After getting a couple of requests to open up the circle, I migrating the blast to this blog.  I definitely could use some help stocking this blog, so let me know if you have some ideas.  

It is my sincere hope to be able to retire this blog within the year.  There are many sites covering similar ground AND doing it much better.  I will do my best to advise you of them as I come by them.  I see this as sort of a mutual education action: if we all become sufficiently knowledgeable about the issues in a reasonable time,  we will take action, results will occur, and we can all direct our attention elsewhere.  Until then, thanks for coming by.